Housing Inequality in Memphis: How did we get here?

            Places Journal describes itself as an “essential and trusted resource on the future of architecture, landscape, and urbanism” and has recently started publishing a series of articles named, “The Inequality Chronicles” (Lauterbach, 2016).  The articles in this series highlight the historical and contemporary inequalities present in numerous American cities, and have featured articles, which delve into this injustice in cities such as Houston or Baltimore. Preston Lauterbach, a former visiting scholar at Rhodes, wrote an article, which focused on the racial inequality in Memphis as exhibited through the current housing system which has undeniable segregationist roots. This lengthy article provides a clear trajectory connecting racist housing policies established in the days of Crump to the unequal housing realities faced by Memphians today.

            I found the section which sought to provide a relatively comprehensive history of the “white flight” movement in Memphis to be particularly interesting. Racist housing policies such as red-lining occur in many urban cities through the United States. Lauterbach analyzes how policies which occur nationally are specifically experienced within the historical context and geographical setting of the city of Memphis. In this article, Lauterbach makes a convincing argument that the city of Memphis maintains a relatively unique housing situation and that solutions to these problems should keep these specificities in mind. One such section explains how Memphis differs from other cities with seemingly comparable housing struggles.

In an ongoing effort to recapture its lost revenue base, Memphis has annexed this ever-expanding crabgrass frontier so that it can collect property taxes from white flighters. Over time, the city has grown to a sprawling 324 square miles, larger than New York City, Atlanta, or St. Louis, without increasing its population of 650,000. Now the city government is responsible for providing services to that vast area, and yet the county roll shows that a third of the land — 95 square miles — is essentially vacant, and much more is sparsely populated. In several cases the city gambled badly, annexing planned developments that never materialized, and now its diminished resources are spread thin across an ever larger territory, much of which generates no revenue. (Lauterbach, 2016)

            Lauterbach goes on to explain how many Memphis-specific factors formed an environment in which specific individuals could maintain impressive control over the allocation of funding from federal grants. There were, it appears, insufficient checks on this power which resulted in federal funds which were intended for low-income and primarily black communities to be allocated to projects, such as the re-vamping of Overton Square, that ultimately did little to positively influence low-income communities and may have even negatively influenced them through gentrification. Lauterbach uses the Peabody Place project as an example of the misallocation of federal funds in Memphis. To build this glorified mall, Memphis allocated funds which included $2.7 million in Community Development Block Grants, $14.9 million from HUD Urban Development Action Grants, and $9.9 million from a Section 108 loan. This wasteful spending did nothing for surrounding low-income communities, and Lauterbach writes that “all those millions amounted to zero long-term job growth, and community activists believe the funds should have gone instead toward tangible improvement at the neighborhood level” (Lauterbach 2016). Preston Lauterbach’s article paints a vivid portrait of housing inequality in Memphis and the ways in which Memphis’ history directly influences this inequality.

Lauterbach, P. (2016). Memphis Burning. Places Journal. doi:10.22269/160307